


End of Winter

by gnomesb4trolls



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Narnia, Sad but maybe a little hopeful too?, Susan Pevensie Never Forgot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 00:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnomesb4trolls/pseuds/gnomesb4trolls
Summary: As usual, just me having feelings about Susan Pevensie.





	End of Winter

The anniversaries are like scars, now. 

Narnians had already celebrated more holidays than Susan and her siblings had been used to, even before the long winter: but after, during the fragile years right after the witch’s death and the steadier ones later, the most important of all of them was Liberation Day, also known as End of Winter. 

It had actually been November when the witch was defeated, so that after the seasons had gone back to their normal rhythm they were celebrating the anniversary just as the days were getting gray and cold. It felt right, though, to remind themselves that spring would come again, that the grip of winter that they could already feel was no more than natural. 

For the first three years, Edmund’s seat had been empty at the feast; for the next three, he’d managed to attend even though he looked more like a statue than a boy. When they actually had built a statue of him, years later, Susan had only been able to see that frozen version of him, a lanky teenager with the eyes of someone who’d been through a war. 

The four of them, starting that first year, had made their own tradition for the day after, when the feast was over and the bonfires had burned out and the rest of Narnia went back to everyday life. On that day, they holed up in one of their bedrooms, which were all enormous in a way that they never got used to, sheltered on someone’s elaborate four-poster bed in a nest of blankets and pillows. They raided the kitchens for enough food to last the day, and whiled away the hours reading to each other and eating and sometimes just lying there, listening to each other’s breathing and remembering. They never stopped doing it, even after they’d grown up, even after Edmund could go to the feast and smile and laugh with the rest of them, even after there were statues of all of them in the great hall of Cair Paravel and their names were no longer just theirs anymore. 

They’d tried to keep that day for the four of them even when they were back in England, weighed down by the memories of another world’s holy days. It had gotten more difficult as the years passed, more difficult than it had ever been in Narnia. That was the thing about growing up: it never happened the same way twice. 

Susan hasn’t thought of Liberation Day in years, but maybe that’s because she’s tried not to. This is the first year that she wants to remember, that it feels bittersweet but not unbearable. It isn’t the feast that she misses, though if she closes her eyes she can still see the Great Hall blazing with light and the smiles of their friends, as magical as anything they’d seen in all of their years in Narnia. It’s the day after that she aches for, the time that had just been for the four of them. At first it had been about comforting Edmund, but it had become more than that: a reminder of how much they’d survived together, of what they’d built not just for Narnia but for each other. One year, after Peter and Lucy had both fallen asleep, she’d seen Edmund just looking up at the carved fauns on the canopy (they’d been in Lucy’s room, that year) and asked what he was thinking. She’d been worried about him, in that way that she’d never been able to shake since his time with the witch. He’d smiled, though, his real, sweet smile that none of them had seen for years before Narnia and that was just starting to come back, and said, “I’m just making sure that I don’t forget.” 

This year, she wants to do something, even if there’s no one to share it with. She dips into her meager savings and takes herself out for a dinner than she shouldn’t be able to afford, and when the maître d’ at the restaurant looks her up and down and opens his mouth to deny her a table, she flashes him a look that she hasn’t used since the last time she stopped a war. 

He gives her a table by the window. It’s already dark by the time she sits down, the light of the lone candle reflected in the pane. She’s not far from the Thames, and even though she can’t see it or hear it she knows it’s there, and that comforts her. It’s not her river, but it, too, flows to the sea. Somewhere, she thinks, there are fauns dancing by torchlight, accompanied by the current of another river whose echo she can still feel deep in her bones. Narnia had been hers in a way that England has never had a chance to become, for all that she was born here. After, she thinks, she might go for a walk near the bank, pulling up the collar of her coat against the icy wind, and in spite of the city lights there will still be stars, and she will remember that this world is beautiful too, in its own way, and that her holy days are still hers even though it doesn’t know them.


End file.
